Rescue of the Danish Jews

The Rescue of the Danish Jews occurred in October 1943 when the Danish Resistance and several sympathetic Danish Christians assisted in the evacuation of 7,220 Danish Jews to Sweden, along with 686 non-Jewish spouses. On 1 October 1943, German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered the deportation of the Danish Jews on Rosh Hashanah, with SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Wilhelm Best planning a wave of arrests on the Jewish holiday. However, German naval attache Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz informed the Jews about the planned deportations, and Jewish rabbis told their congregants about the menace, while Jewish citizens told their Christian friends. Soon, it became an open secret that the Germans were preparing to strike, so many Christians hid Jews in their homes; Doctor Karl Koster hid many Jews in his hospital, the morgue, and other public facilities, changing their names to Christian ones. They were then smuggled to the coast, where they were taken to Sweden by Danish fishermen; fishing boats were the only Danish vessels that were not impounded by the Germans. The Danish Resistance escorted convoys of Jews to the shore, and they fended off any attempts by the Wehrmacht and SS to capture the Jews. The rescue was highly successful, with 99% of Danish Jews being rescued. Almost all of them would return to Denmark after the war's end, finding their possessions returned and their gardens tended to by their Christian friends.